An Accumulation of Exasperations!

The chief irritation since returning from California has undoubtedly been the nine hour time differential and attendant jet-lag. The erstwhile traveller, not ill, merely adrift; not alert, merely sluggish, nevertheless is easily moved to shortage of temper and tolerance. So, a further accretion of vexatious occurrences was not welcome!!

Thus, I left my swimming cap in the hotel shower the second morning back, and it naturally vanished from the earth. The very next day, the strap on my swimming goggles, broke. With no spare and no sports shop whatsoever in the Egg, I ordered two new pairs online. And waited! The large cellar of my building was [unusually] flooded at the end of November and I keep several small items in my allotted ‘room’ down there. So, enormous was the vexation to find it still flooded on my return, at the beginning of the year! AND THEN, a registered letter from the Brugge tax office, obviously part of a ‘sweep’ of the foreign-born, with 13 questions, the answers to which the Tax People already have somewhere in the electronic bowels of their offices. I then broke a very useful, small cooking dish. I administered a quick Duvel when the little dish broke which set the tone for a swift recovery!

And here we are, two weeks after my homecoming with, I hardly dare whisper it, everything sorted!! Or almost. Viewing the slight disasters of the previous week, I shall deliver the information by hand to the Tax Office to be sure I shall miss the threatened fine!! In the meantime, yesterday I witnessed the annual [for four years] joyful procession of a large group of international performers in their Venetian Carnival gear, parade through town. The Costumes de Venise people, around 100 normally, have to produce their own costumes I believe and the outfits are outstanding. They are imaginatively conceived, creatively wrought, and oh so stylishly worn. I hear that their presence here on a cold January weekend, stems from an initiative by the combined Hotels of Brugge; brilliant idea that underlines the occasional refrain that Brugge is the ‘Venice of the North’, a claim no doubt echoed by many Northern cities with canals such as Amsterdam!! But, well done Hotels of Brugge for such gorgeous subliminal advertising.

                         For the freezing spectators, the procession was like a parade of peacocks.
                                                              Pageantry personified!